A couple of urchins had witnessed his unceremonious exit, and they had also seen the slippers aimed. The whole proceeding seemed to strike them in a much more humorous light than it did Bertie, and to mark their enjoyment of the fun they danced about and shrieked with laughter.
As Bertie began to slink away the man said to them something which seemed to make them prick up their ears. They followed Bertie, pointing with their fingers.
"V'là un Anglais! C'est un larron! au voleur! au voleur!"
What it was they shrieked in their shrill voices Bertie had not the least idea, but he knew it was unpleasant to be pointed and shouted at, for their words were caught up by other urchins of their class, and soon he had a force of ragamuffins shrieking close at his heels.
"V'là un Anglais! un Anglais! C'est un lar--r--ron!"
The stress which they laid upon the larron was ear-splitting.
As he went, his following gathered force. They were a ragged regiment. Some hatless, some shoeless, all stockingless; for even those who wore sabots showed an inch or two of naked flesh between the ends of their breeches and the tops of their wooden shoes.
As Bertie found his way into the better portions of the town the procession created a sensation. Shopkeepers came to their doors to stare, the loungers in the cafés stood to look. Some of the foot-passengers joined the rapidly-swelling crowd.
The boy with his sullen face passed on, his lips compressed, his eyes with their dogged look. What the hubbub was about, why they followed him, what it was they kept on shouting, he did not understand. He knew that the captain had left him, and left him penniless. What he was himself to do, or where he was going, he had not the least idea. He only knew that the crowd was hunting him on.
There was not one friendly face among those around him--not one who could understand. The boys seemed like demons, shrieking, dancing, giving him occasional shoves. Separately he would have tackled any one of them, for they could not despise him for being English more heartily than he despised them for being French. But what could he do against that lot?--a host, too, which was being reinforced by men. For the cry "Un Anglais!" seemed to be infectious, and citizens of the grimier and more popular type began to swell the throng and shriek "Un Anglais!" with the boys.